Mr. Damien Geoghegan:

I agree with Mr. Donnelly. There was much talk about electronic voting, but unless the State can show that it can get various websites working right and IT systems in different agencies, people just will not trust electronic voting. It is as simple as that. Mr. Donnelly touched on the point when he referred to checktheregister.ie. If there is one thing that is in a worse state than the register, it is the checktheregister.iewebsite. That is a fact. Young people nowadays want information at their fingertips, at a couple of clicks of a button. One has various websites and census results going back to the late 1800s, and one can find out what house and what street one’s great great grandfather lived in, but when one goes onto checktheregister.ieone cannot even find one’s own house on it.

Local authorities need to do a lot of simple things. For example, when a local authority house is allocated, that person should immediately be placed on the register. It is as simple as that. The supplementary register should also be open longer for additions. It is closed too early prior to polling day. If one is out canvassing and one meets someone six weeks prior to an election and they are not on the register, one can get them onto the register, but if one meets a person four or five days beforehand it is too late. If one had met them the previous week it would have been possible. We need to consider such issues and keep the supplementary register open that bit longer.

Quite a lot of people do not want to go on the register. That will have to be dealt with. Whatever about compulsory voting, everybody has an address or a place where they reside and perhaps one should at least have compulsory registration. There are a number of reasons people do not want to go on the register. They may not want their domestic situation, for example, being brought to the attention of the authorities. That is something we need to deal with as well. It is not a simple or a black-and-white issue. There is much food for thought there.